Gemma Mitchell of the Eastern Anglian Daily Times has one of the most shocking exclusives we have ever read about the Board of Shame of Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT):

Campaigners have reacted with outrage after it emerged four bosses at the region’s failing mental health trust were each awarded £10,000 pay rises last year.

When NSFT was briefly released from Special Measures, was the priority of the Board improving the quality of mental health services? Or was it trousering £10,000 pay rises each?

These completely unjustifiable pay rises demonstrate the complete breakdown of corporate governance and ethics on the NSFT Board of Shame, where the needs of those who rely on mental health services are secondary to the avarice of the Board of Shame. Perhaps we should call it the Board of No Shame?

Ms Armstrong left the trust in January this year and received a £54,000 contractual payment in lieu of notice, which meant she could leave without working her notice period. Three months later she got a job at Colchester Hospital as head of operations for medicine and emergency care.

Dr Sayer and Ms Howlett both resigned last month after Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) was rated ‘inadequate’ by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and plunged into special measures for the second time.

After NSFT was rated inadequate by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and placed into Special Measures for an unprecedented second time, the NSFT Director of Nursing, Jane Sayer, and Director of Strategy and Resources, Leigh Howlett, suddenly left NSFT’s Board of Shame. Both are apparently continuing to trouser their increased salaries of £108,000 per year which were ‘subject to the Trust coming out of special measures’, even though the trust is back in special measures and they are not working for NSFT.

Of the directors who received pay rises of more than ten per cent, only poor Debbie White, Director of Operations (Norfolk), is still expected to work for her money. Though, of course, it would be factually inaccurate to call her poor after her staggering £10,000 pay rise.

All this money, tens of thousands of pounds, comes from NHS funding which is supposed to be spent on patient care.

A spokeswoman for NSFT said: “The remuneration committee is responsible for determining the pay for executive directors and ensuring that pay levels are competitive. The committee holds an annual review of pay levels, taking account of available national, independent benchmarking information.

Does the very round number of £10,000 sound like the result of a rigorous benchmarking exercise or a figure plucked out of the air as the largest increase that they thought they could get away with?

We understand that the ridiculously-titled Company Secretary of NSFT, Robert Nesbitt, has also received a substantial pay rise. Strange that, given that company secretaries would normally be involved in the commissioning of benchmarking exercises. How could Robert Nesbitt be expected to survive on a mere £81,618 per year plus expenses?

We also hear rumours that other NSFT directors have received pay rises while the pay of front line staff has been frozen or restricted to one per cent pay rises and mental health services have been cut.

We’ve never known empty seats around the table of the Board of Shame. But NSFT has hundreds of vacancies for front line staff. Where is the expensive benchmarking exercise for them?

“An increase of £10,000 each was therefore recommended and approved (subject to the trust coming out of special measures, which it did) for the trust’s two directors of operations, the director of nursing, quality and patient safety, and the director of strategy and resources. This brought their individual wages to £108,000.

“This was in line with the average for mental health trust directors and more generally within the region.

“While NSFT bosses awarded themselves £10,000 pay rises for leaving special measures, NSFT was heading towards another inadequate CQC inspection, a return to special measures and the ignominy of becoming the undisputed ‘worst mental health trust in the country’.

“As mental health services have been cut and the remaining front line NSFT staff were restricted to a maximum of 1% pay rises, NSFT bosses decided to help themselves to pay rises more than ten times greater.”

He added: “Surely, now that the failure of NSFT’s management has again been exposed by the CQC, these unjustifiable rewards for failure should be removed from the recipients and instead invested in overstretched NHS services.”

NSFT staff union, Unison, also comments:

UNISON, the public sector union, is running a pay campaign urging the Government to scrap the 1% cap.

Jeff Keighley, regional organiser for UNISON in Suffolk, said: “This is public money. Obviously a trust’s remuneration committee would be where this is decided presently, but should it be? Frankly this decision needs to be fair from all angles.

“Why such a sudden measure was taken of a 10% rise for directors; when their staff, who work on the front line delivering care and support and are worth at least the same only get 1%, means the decision was clearly wrong. Cost of living is up for everyone and dedicated front line staff have lost out on pay rises worth thousands vs inflation in recent years.”

Read the article in full on the EADT website by clicking on the image below:

How low can they stoop? Just when you think they’ve reached the bottom they keep on digging! This is an insult to the SUs and carers who have suffered, and continue to suffer, due to their managerial incompetence. They have lined their pockets with SUs money, spent money to prove that black is white (beds review coverup), continuously lied and stretched the truth and tried to dismiss the more than doubling of the death rate as ‘within national average’. So maybe they consider this underhanded behaviour as ‘hard work’, hence justifying their greed.

We nominate @richardbranson for staying out of the country so he doesn't pay tax or retain his entitlement to use the NHS and for giving useless undertakings which don't say he won't flog @VirginCare to the highest offshore bidder once he's won all the NHS contracts at a loss. twitter.com/VirginCare/sta…

One man's hubris is having a devastating impact on @NSFTtweets. @NSFTChair Gary Page has imposed a disastrous new CEO rejected by staff and execs and deemed unappointable by service users and carers. Now he's resigning from subcommittees preparing to leave having created chaos. pic.twitter.com/rsP5B25Ktb

Jane Sayer was directly responsible for quality and governance at Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT). After the damning report from the Care Quality Commission, her position was untenable. […]